Social Care Council did not breach rules

The General Social Care Council has been cleared of breaching its own rules by denying a social worker the opportunity to contest medical advice that led to him being wrongly refused registration.

The Care Standards Tribunal last week reversed its opinion, made at a hearing in June, that the GSCC had wrongly refused the social worker the right to make representations to its registration committee on the medical advice.

However, the reversal does not alter the tribunal’s decision to overturn the GSCC’s refusal to register the man nor its view that the reasons for refusal were “wholly inadequate”, involving a failure to evaluate his evidence (news, 23 June).

When the registration committee met in February, the medical adviser said that the man’s retirement from the probation service in 2000 on the grounds of depression and stress meant he was unfit to be registered as a social worker.

Last week the tribunal decided that, under the GSCC’s rules, the committee had the discretion, not an obligation, to grant the man an oral hearing to contest the medical adviser’s evidence.